


summer camp is for suckers

by cecilia095



Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Comedy, F/M, One Shot, Rivalry, We Love a Good Rivals to Lovers™ Trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24384097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilia095/pseuds/cecilia095
Summary: It’s the third summer in a row they’re assigned to the same age group, and she wants to have a talk with the guy who runs his place and ask him why he keeps rehiring Cranky Nick Miller back year after year.AU.
Relationships: Jessica Day/Nick Miller
Comments: 6
Kudos: 111





	summer camp is for suckers

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was: [we’re both ‘team leaders’ at a summer camp for little people and you may be hot but goddammit my collection of twelve-year-olds are going to beat yours into the dust](https://perfectlyrose.tumblr.com/post/113796655008/thebrassyopeningtoirresistible-a-list-of-aus-for) and I turned it into... this weird little story. Mirrors a few of my favorite events from back in the 'Cooler' days (because I miss 'em, man). Enjoy, and let me know if you do! :)

“Are you really calling your team ‘The Day-sies’?”

Jess _hates_ when he does that; scrunches his nose up like that at her, questioning her Camp Counselor skills. It’s the third summer in a row they’re assigned to the same age group, and she wants to have a talk with the guy who runs his place and ask him why he keeps rehiring Cranky Nick Miller back year after year.

They're... Okay, it's not like she hates working alongside the guy, but they're not exactly the best of friends. Why should they be? He legitimately hates this job, isn't exactly a kid person, and once told her that this campground reminds him of something in one of his weirder, murder-y sex dreams.

Jess is... well... Jess. Spending her summers sculpting the imaginations of little people is her second life's purpose when she isn't teaching the rest of the year, and although she wouldn't use the word 'outdoorsy' to describe herself (please, ignore her LinkedIn bio) she gets used to swatting away mosquitoes, peeing in outhouses, and the poor excuse for burger meat they get to eat in the dining hall. 

She even tries her best to get along with her co-counselor, because they're about to spend another long, sticky, sweaty two months together.

“It’s better than your team name Miller. I mean, what the hell are ‘The Pepperwoods’ and _why_ should I cheer for them?”

“‘Cause they’re eleven and dorky and vulnerable,” Nick states, “and also ‘Pepperwood’ is a character from the book I’m writing. I left a draft in your suitcase last summer and you _still_ haven’t given me your thoughts.”

“Oh, right.” Jess pretends to forget about the draft of ‘The Pepperwood Chronicles’ her coworker left in her luggage on the final day of camp last August, but honestly, she read it on the bus ride home and it was better than some of the crap on her Kindle. “My thoughts are: It was good, but I still don’t like you very much, so I won’t be rating it publicly.”

“Not even on Amazon?”

“Not a chance.”

—

The Day-sies beat The Pepperwoods in tug-of-war six rounds to four, and Jess and Nick both find an equal amount of pleasure in the fact that their unruly groups of tweens are spent by six-thirty. No arts and crafts tonight? Fine. No skipping rocks in that stupid lake? ‘ _Even finer_ ’, Nick exclaims. 

All they want is to tell some ghost stories by the campfire with some of the other counselors and their kids, and Jess is the first to grant them her permission. She needs to sit down and ice her hands (— rope burn, _ouch_ ) and she also wants to find her thermos and fill it with pink wine she’ll tell the kids is water.

So they join Cece and Schmidt, the two counselors for the twelve to thirteen year-olds, and forty little bodies start chatting away, telling the craziest (and most _disturbing_ — kids these days are something else) ghost stories they can think of.

“Phew.” Jess swipes a hand across her sweaty forehead, the sticky bug spray all over her body making her super uncomfortable as she squats onto one of the log seats around the campfire. 

She sits beside Cece, who she really likes and wishes were her co-counselor most days rather than Miller. They clink their thermoses together and Cece asks, “Moscato or rosè?”

Jess explains pink wine is a staple in her life and laughs when Cece says hers _might_ have gin in it.

“God, I hate him.”

Jess notices the fury in Cece’s eyes when she glares over at Schmidt, who’s currently bragging about how he learned everything he knows about fires from _Survivor_ , bashfully waving one of the kids off who suggests he’d be a _great_ castaway as if the compliment didn't make his entire _year_.

She doesn’t know much about him aside from the fact that he’s decently cute, that his mom once ordered thirty pizza pies to the campground when the meat for the burgers in the fridge went bad a day before it was supposed to, that out of all of the counselors, he’s the only one who got his name stitched into his polo shirt.

“Did he beat you in tug-of-war?” Jess questions. “I think Nick’s secretly pissed that my team won tonight. I mean, it’s the first day back at camp and I’m already kicking his ass.”

Cece snorts at that. “He wishes. No, it’s just — after last summer, we decided to give whatever weird relationship we had here a shot, and —”

“Wait, so you _were_ flirting at the lake when I saw you guys that time?”

“Which time?” Cece questions, and Jess’s eyes widen when she realizes she’s serious. “No, like, we’ve had _sex_ in that hell swamp, Jess. A lot of it.”

“More information than I’d hoped for, but… okay.” They’re kind of friends, the only real friend she has here, so Jess presses on, praying she’s not overstepping. “So what - what happened between you two?”

Cece’s eager to share the details, clearly.

“We got home, realized we wanted to have sex outside of a lake, — or - or those back-breaking twin beds Tagliaboo can _definitely_ afford to have replaced in the cabins — and we gave it a shot.” Cece tugs down on her lip and looks over her shoulder to make sure Schmidt is still bragging about his fire-making skills and not at all paying attention to her and Jess. “Anyway, it was fine at first — he’s a fifteen minute drive from my place in Pasadena so not super long-distance, the sex was even better outside of the lake. But he’s not a relationship guy and I didn’t think I was a relationship _girl_ , until I got weirdly jealous at the thought of him sleeping with someone else and we sort of broke up. If, y’know, you can break up with someone you’re just screwing.”

“Oh, you totally can. I’ve been dumped by _so_ many one-night-stands before. One even found me on my _LinkedIn_ just to tell me there wouldn’t be a time number two.”

“Ohhh, you poor thing.” Cece sympathetically palms Jess’s kneecap. “Anyway, what’s Miller’s deal? You two ever bone it out before?”

Jess is legitimately _offended_ , but then she snaps out of it because how is a co-worker she sees once every four seasons supposed to know that her taste in men is not… Well, Nick Miller wears a lot of flannel despite it being ninety-degree Southern California, thinks someone famous stole his ideas, and has a lower credit score than some babies she knows. He’s not exactly who she’s planning on bringing home to Bob and Joan. Basically: Jess thought about it _once_ , three summers ago, but then he’d asked her to skip the s’mores roasting and come back to the cabin to read his _The Walking Dead_ fan fiction, and any man who’s the man for Jess would know how much she appreciates a good s’more.

“Ugh. _Nick_? _Nick_ _Miller_?"

Cece nods in confirmation. "Uh-huh, that would be the Nick."

"Never. Between me and you, the only person here I find _remotely_ cute is Sam Sweeney, but my mom would be bitter if I brought home a lifeguard. He’s pretty low on the tier.”

"You can admit Nick is cute, Jess. Doesn't mean you've gotta be in love with the guy. I see you two flirt-fighting during the relay races."

"It's a three-year-long rivalry. I take my dedication to it seriously, and so does he," Jess defends.

"Whatever you've gotta tell yourself. Look, I was mostly kidding. You need to date outside the camp. This place _suuucks_."

"It's not _that_ bad, and I mean... everyone's nice, mostly."

“Word of advice, Jess...” Cece takes a long sip from her thermos and presses her lips together, lowering her voice a little bit. “The love of your life is _not_ at this camp, and if they are, pretend they aren’t. Go date like, a lawyer or a police officer. You’re too pure to date one of _us_ , you know what I’m saying?”

—

“You’re really killin’ my vibe here, Day.”

With a mouth full of toothpaste that’s now dribbling down her chin, she muffles, “What vibe? I’m - I’m brushin’ my teef.” 

“Can you do it _outside_ of my space?” He looks down to the ground, and unless she’s oblivious, there’s no designated Nick Miller Bathroom Space. There’s just… well… a sink and a stack of Dixie cups and the mouthwash she brought from home, which she doesn’t call him out on stealing even though she’d very much like to. Especially after this ‘my space’ ordeal. 

She pulls the toothbrush from her mouth, spitting into the sink. After she’s done rinsing, she looks over at him and glares. “Boo-hoo. You’re upset we’re assigned to the same cabin. I’m not exactly thrilled about tripping over your insane flannel collection every morning either, but here we freakin’ are.”

“It’s not _insane_ , Jessica. It’s practical. Flannels are the sexiest piece of outerwear. Look it up.”

“I’m not wasting my very limited cellular data on _that_ ,” she retorts.

“Whatever. I just don’t know why they didn’t put me with Winston, that’s all.”

Winston is the six-to-ten counselor. He’s so good at this job, they trust him with _four years_ worth of kids. Aly is his co-counselor, and also his rumored camp fling. Together, they’re kind of an unstoppable duo. If Jess liked Nick a fair amount, she’d show him the section on her vision board where she and Nick replicate Winston and Aly’s positions here. But, she doesn’t; she kind of can’t stand him, so ‘Camp Counselor of the Year’ won’t have a place on her resume. Whatever. 

“Because they trust Winston with _loads_ more little people than they trust us with?”

“I don’t know why,” Nick says, “one time I watched him sprain his knee by tripping on one of the kids’ lightning bug jars. He was out for like, half the summer, remember?”

“Vaguely, but I remember a canoeing incident.”

“That’s a lie. It was a lightning bug jar incident.”

Jess grabs one of the Dixie cups off of the counter and fills it with mouthwash, rinsing and spitting a few times before turning her attention back to Nick.

“I’ve _also_ had lightning bug jar incidents — yes, _incidents_ , plural — in my lifetime, so go easy on him. Also, the next time you’re mean to me, I _will_ drag your mattress out onto the lake _The Parent Trap_ style. It’s my favorite movie of all-time, and I’ve seen the scene enough to replicate it. Don’t try me.”

—

Ernie Tagliaboo hardly calls people into his office. As a matter of fact, he usually just comes by camp before the weekends to make sure the kids’ postcards get sent home in time for their parents to receive them by Monday, to replace the tiki torches that inevitably got broken — and used as pretend swords by Cece and Schmidt’s rambunctious bunch — during the week, to follow up with the counselors and make sure everything’s running as smoothly as it needs to be. Usually, it is, and he’s out in two hours tops.

“You know why you’re here.”

“In this musty, mosquito-filled cabin of yours?” Schmidt does his best to grin despite wanting to _die_ from the stickiness inside of Ernie’s seldom-used ‘office’. It takes everything inside of him not to point out the broken windows, the inevitable source of the mosquito-entry. “Hardly. Please, do enlighten us.”

Standing beside him, Cece’s looking disinterestedly at her fingernails, hoping she didn’t just get herself fired. Part of her doesn’t care, because have you ever Googled a camp counselor’s salary? Also, this bug spray is really leaving her skin under-moisturized and if she has to write _one more_ ‘I miss you soooo much, Mom and Dad’ postcard out for a kid who just finished saying how much they _hate_ being home, they _hate_ their parents, _that’s_ why they’re here... Yeah. 

“You’re here,” Ernie starts, “because it’s been brought to my attention that there’s some… tension between you two.”

Schmidt tilts his head back to cackle. “The only tension between Cecelia and I is our latest debate on who would win _Survivor_. Spoiler alert: I outlast. I outwit. I outplay. She comes in second; the best runner-up we’ve seen in _seasons_.”

“Not true! I’d kill it at the challenges and you _know_ that, you idi —”

“The tension is… I’ma just say it, it’s Friday and I’m taking my wife out for bowling and sushi, I don’t have time for this shit.” Ernie stands up from his place at his desk, hands pocketed in his basketball shorts. “It’s sex. Quit having sex on my campground and find some _other_ place to get it on. The new outhouses are roomy, and then no one can snitch on you. Okay? Okay. Now get the hell out of here and go make birdhouses with your kids.”

—

‘Crafting’ is normally Jessica Day’s middle name, but today she might have a heat stroke, sitting out here with twenty eleven-year-old’s who cannot — for the life of them — build a damn birdhouse. It’s one of the easier projects on her list; she’s been making them as gifts since her classmate Eduardo’s sixth birthday party in the first grade. 

“Hey.” 

Nick scoots onto the bench she’s sitting on, and she wants to reach over and unbutton that out-of-season flannel he’s got on — not in a sexual way, just in a ‘I’m sweating just _looking at you_ ’ way, okay?

“Hey, Miller. Look, if you’re here to ask me why I’m so upset, it’s because the kids _suck_ at building birdhouses and I’m too hot to help them. Seriously, it’s like two-hundred degrees, man." She fans herself off dramatically, sucking in a breath. "Why did they assign Cece and Schmidt’s group inside and not ours?”

“Something about there being cameras inside. They’re easier to monitor that way.” Jess looks up at him, puzzled, but then remembers that she’s definitely not the only person to have seen Cece and Schmidt… y’know… banging each other’s brains out in very public areas of camp. “It comes straight from my source.”

“You don’t have to say ‘my source’, just say Winston.”

Nick levels a hand at her. “Fine. You figured it out, Day.”

“Wasn’t that hard. You know, you’re usually pretty unreadable — except for the fact that you’re grumpy; you’re grumpier than my ninety-two year old grandpa, and he hates everything on this planet except chocolate-covered-cherries and 80’s fashion models. But I’m not stupid. No one here talks to you except for him, sometimes Schmidt, and maybe Tran.”

Tran’s the swim coach who comes in and teaches lessons at the lake twice a week. His only friend here seems to be Nick, and whenever Tran stops by Nick’s in a seemingly better mood that day. She doesn’t know whether it’s creepy or endearing or a weird combination of both.

“You’re talkin’ to me right now,” he's happy to point out.

She pokes him on the shoulder like a twelve-year-old girl would poke her crush. Or her pain in the ass brother. She can’t decide. “Only because _you_ came up to _me_ first.” 

“I think you’re gonna like me after this.” Wordlessly, he holds up her thermos to her and smirks. 

“Did you pee in that?”

“Did I — You think I’d piss in your thermos?”

“Actually, I do. I heard you telling Schmidt that you don’t trust outhouses.”

“I don’t,” he says pointedly. “I’ve had way too many dreams about those things flying out of the ground and transporting you to space, mid-pee. Whether that’s cool or not, I can’t figure out, but I’m not trying to find out _here_.”

Jess stifles a laugh, because she can’t let her Camp Rival think he’s _funny_ , can she? When she doesn’t say anything, he tells her to take a sip from the thermos. She wrinkles her nose in disgust, weirdly anticipating urine, or bug spray, or _worse_ , but then she tastes her sweet, sweet pink wine and takes a breath.

“Ughhh. I needed this.”

“I know. That’s why I snuck it over to ‘ya.”

—

Only the six of them are around the campfire. The kids are long asleep after too many s’mores and lightning bug competitions, and now it’s just the six camp counselors and the alcohol they managed to wait until now to consume.

Jess obviously doesn’t know Aly and Winston as well as she knows the others, but after spending thirty minutes with them she realizes why they’re the sought after counselors of the bunch. Winston wrote an entire _song_ about their day, today, and Aly builds a fire so good it would’ve gotten Schmidt voted out of _Survivor_ on Week 1.

“These logs are _not_ good for my tailbone,” Schmidt whines, wiggling uncomfortably in his spot between Nick and Winston. The girls are across from the guys, sharing sips of the wine Cece brought and munching on the kids’ leftover graham crackers.

“You also have bug spray in your hair,” Cece points out, and Schmidt looks shocked that she’s even speaking to him. Y’know, after the whole ordeal in Ernie’s office. Spoiler alert: They did _not_ do it in the outhouse, because she still hates him.

“I’m sensitive about the amount of bug spray I require, and you _know_ that!”

"Only because you bragged to me about how much mosquitoes like the taste of your blood. Of course _you'd_ find a way to make mosquito bites sexual."

Aly rolls her eyes. “I’ll cover for you two if you want to go work off your rage in the lake. Just make sure you swim out farther than you did last time; your bare, white ass still haunts my nightmares, Schmidt.”

“There’ll be _no_ working off _anything_ ,” Cece chimes in, her fixed eyes on Schmidt. It’s the same glare like she gave him on the first night of camp, Jess notices. “We aren’t anything aside from co-counselors, and that’s _fine_ with me.”

Schmidt glares back at her, but he's almost snickering. “Is it, though?”

Cece sets down her plastic wine glass and throws the sleeve of half-eaten graham crackers onto the dirt. “I’m going to bed,” she announces. “Don’t follow me.”

“I - I kind of have to eventually,” Schmidt sheepishly admits, “we’re bunk mates.”

“Ugh.”

No one follows Cece to bed, and Schmidt stays put for awhile, talking to all of them about nothing, then about why they’re here in the first place.

Winston goes first. “No place lets me showcase my weird talents like this camp does,” he argues, and Aly has to agree. Apparently, Winston’s skills aren’t ordinary, and Jess can totally see that. He’s not an ordinary person, and that’s okay. Like, he wore a bird shirt to orientation, three years in a row. A _different_ bird shirt. Like, he owns more than one.

Nick shrugs when it’s his turn. “I dunno. I like dirt. And citronella candles. And - and the mountains.”

“This is a park in Southern California,” Aly flatly corrects him.

Jess goes next, swallowing the last piece of her graham cracker before she speaks. “I know it’s stupid, but I — I love this job because I love making people happy. I like making a difference. This place gives kids who may not have a great summer otherwise a place to enjoy themselves. Also, I’m strangely good at building birdhouses. Not so good at canoeing, but we can’t win at everything.”

Jess watches Nick shift in his place on the log across from her, and he shoots her somewhat of a smile, as close to a smile as Nick Miller as is capable of giving someone. 

Her heart sinks into her stomach, and she doesn't know whether or not to blame the wine for that. She rubs her lips together and manages to look back at him when everyone else is occupied with pictures Winston's showing the group of his cat.

Nick stands after another minute and holds his empty wine glass up. "Another round?" 

It's way past curfew — yep, even counselor curfew — but Jess is the first one to say, "I'll grab another bottle." 

She's not even tired tonight.

—

Fine, so maybe this isn’t the summer she gets good at canoeing, okay?

She and Schmidt are super off-balanced, almost so badly that she fears her polka-dot cardigan is doomed, that the boat is about to tip over, sending both of them plunging into the colder-than-she’d-like-it-to-be lake water.

Cece and Nick’s canoe zooms past theirs, Cece hollering in victory as they pass Aly and Winston’s canoe and head for the finish line. 

From Jess’s view, they all look like _ants_ , and she rows with a little more fierceness, telling her partner to step it up.

“Well, _sue me_ ,” Schmidt exclaims dramatically. “Canoeing is one of my only camp-related weaknesses, along with sleeping in a _tent_.”

“That’s like, eighty-five percent of camping.”

“Whatever. Have you seen me make a fire?”

Jess lightens up on the rowing and drops the paddle, propping it up in the canoe and swiping a hand over her forehead. She takes a long, staggered breath and doesn’t even care that they’re in dead last like she normally would.

“Ugh. I usually love this place, but —”

Schmidt’s eyes widen at that, and he drops his paddle too, ignoring Cece and Nick’s boasting at the finish line. Aly shouts something about it being a ‘record time’, and canoeing is _dumb_.

“You know what? Most of the time, I love this stupid place too,” he admits, almost like he’s ashamed to. “But there was a ‘but’. What’s your ‘but’? Mine is that I have to share a bunk with Cece. All I can think about is how beautiful she looks in her camp polo and how wonderfully exotic our kids would turn out. She won’t even look at me. Life sucks.”

“Hey, my bunk mate hates me too, so…”

Schmidt laughs at that one, almost bitterly, and Jess just shoots him a quizzical look and asks him what the hell is so funny about her three-year rivalry with Miller.

“Nick,” he says, “is like a first-grader with a crush. If he’s focused on competing with you for Camp Counselor of the Century, it’s only because he’s trying to distract himself from thinking about getting in your pants.”

—

Instead of thinking about what Schmidt told her on the canoe — and admitting to herself about that one (fine, a few) time where she might’ve thought about getting into Nick’s pants too, banging one out quick to get out whatever angst he clearly needed to, for her to get his stupid, grumpy face out of her head — she just sits by the lake and watches the kids push each other in over and over, fighting over the unicorn floaty.

“J-Jess?”

One of the girls from the eleven year-old group sits down on the ledge of the rock Jess is on, and Jess asks her why she’s not in the water with the rest of the kids. 

“Timmy made fun of my swimsuit,” the girl, Crystal, admits, taking the blue and yellow fabric in between her fingers and playing with it.

“Well Crystal, Timmy can go to hell —" She stops that sentence, but not before she should've. "Oh, God, I didn’t - I didn’t mean that.”

Crystal’s eyes widen at that, and now it’s only a matter of time before she rats Jess out to Tagliaboo.

“What I _meant_ to say was, that swimsuit looks beautiful on you. It really brings out your tan. A-And if it makes you happy, then wear it in the lake every freakin’ day of camp, okay? Don’t listen to Timmy. I mean, look at him.”

They both look out onto the lake. Timmy’s smacking himself in the head with a pool noodle, over and over.

“Thanks. I just - I came over here to say that you’re the coolest camp counselor I’ve ever had.”

Crystal just turned eleven, and this is her third, fourth summer at camp. Aly and Winston were her counselors before Jess was, and that means… 

“Wait, really?” Eleven-year-olds don’t hand out compliments loosely most of the time, Jess notices.

“Uh-huh.” Crystal nods confidently and smiles up at Jess. “I don’t like being home very much, but here? I love it here, and that’s because you taught me how to build a birdhouse, and helped me write a postcard to my cousin, and let me eat _two_ s’mores. I think you’re the _best_ , Jess.”

Jess doesn't know what the rules are on hugging here, but she snakes an arm around Crystal's shoulder and pulls her in for a quick one before anyone looks over at them. "Thanks, kid."

—

“Timmy’s such a little _shit_. Kid cut up my ropes. No tug-of-war tomorrow, I guess.”

“I know. He almost made Crystal cry today.”

Nick nods, and then raises a brow like he just came to a realization. “ _Th_ _at’s_ why you were sittin’ with her at the lake like that.” For someone who… well… he’s not exactly a ‘kid person’, he asks with concern, “Is - is she okay?”

“She’s fine, she just — She told me I’m the best counselor she’s ever had. And she’s had Winston. _Four times_.”

Nick laughs, a genuine one, the first laugh she remembers seeing him laugh like… ever. They don’t exactly share moments like this, and before this one she really didn’t give a crap that they hadn’t. 

“I don’t know why that shocks ‘ya, Jess. Out of everyone here, I think you love it the most. Like, even more than Schmidt, and he wrote a whole _blog_ dedicated to this damn place two summers ago.”

Jess sheepishly smiles, trying not to be so obvious that she’s biting the inside of her cheek at his comment, trying to remember who exactly it is she’s standing in the middle of the dining hall with. 

"It's actually kind of nice, watching someone care about something so much."

At the same time, they utter:

“I - I’m gonna get back to the kids.”

“I - I have to go steal rope from Cece and Schmidt’s camp.”

—

Things are a little weird between Jess and Nick. By ‘weird’, she means they’re not arguing over whose team kicked more ass during the relay race, or whose team caught more frogs during the scavenger hunt, and he doesn’t even tell her to get out of the bathroom when she goes to brush her teeth at the same time as him.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” She asks him when she sets her toothbrush down, slathers moisturizer all over her face, starts to grab the ointment to put on her swollen mosquito bites.

“I’m always this nice.”

“Yeah, _okay_. You forgot to tell me to go to hell today.”

“Hell? Right. It’s where those postcards you spend hours helping the kids write go to die.”

“Annnnnddddd, he’s back.”

“Look.” He pauses for a second, and she swallows a little bit harshly when he grabs onto her elbow to stop her from walking out of the bathroom. “This is stupid, but I just — I guess I’ve felt about you this way for a little while, and —”

“What — what _way_?”

“Jess, c’mon.”

"Come _where_? I'm right here."

"Jess."

She swallows thickly, and feels his name get stuck in her throat. "Nick."

When neither of them say anything else, his hand still wrapped firmly around her elbow, he tugs her in for a long, deeper-than-she-even-realizes kiss. He tastes like her mint mouthwash, and she squeezes her eyes shut tightly when he doesn’t pull away right away. After a few seconds, she lets him deepen the kiss, his grip on her elbow becoming a little more gentle; ‘gentle’ being a word she never thought she’d use in a sentence describing one of Nick Miller’s actions.

“W-What was —”

He gulps, clearly unable to form a reply for a second, until he sheepishly scratches his cheek. “I honestly couldn’t tell ‘ya. I’m just. I’m gonna. Goodnight, Jess.”

“Good...night?”

—

“Nick kissed me.”

Cece coughs on the bacon she’s currently chewing on, swallowing and collecting herself before she lets out a, “Whaaaaat?”

Aly’s also at their table, half pretending to be interested in the cup of orange juice she’s nursing, and half very much into this conversation. The Camp Drama has been scarce since Cece and Schmidt stopped doing it, and this is the most exciting thing to happen since the delivery of the new mini-fridge exclusive to counselors.

“Yeah. It was _weird_ , but I also kissed him back, and I’m still processing that, obviously.”

“Oh God,” Aly chimes in, “you’re one of those people who has an Excel spreadsheet rating your sexual partners on a very accurate scale, don’t you?”

Jess just shrugs her shoulder. “You _don’t_ have one of those?”

Aly doesn’t comment further, and all Cece cares about is the kiss, clearly not having much of her own action going on nowadays. 

"So... what was it like?"

"God, Cece, are you licking your lips right now?" 

Cece groans and shoves her half-eaten plate out of the way to put her head down on the table. "Ugh. I miss sex. Do you know how many painfully boring Indian men I've been out with since Schmidt and I broke up? _Eight_. And none of them were my choice. Our mothers set us up, and now my own mother'll hardly speak to me since I'm not engaged to any of them."

Aly cocks a brow at Cece and goes, "Sounds kind of like what I picture hell to be. Anyway, Jess, continue."

"I-I don't even know what else to say. This is..." She pauses to try and find the words. "This always happens to me! Someone makes a move, I don't _hate_ that move, but then I spend the next week in my head trying to figure out _why_ they would want to make that move in the first place. Like, what prompted him to kiss me?! He - he despises me. He sabotaged my team's rope in tug-of-war, he put holes in my pool float so I wouldn't beat him to the end, he — Okay, I guess a lot of it is just for fun, to make our time here a little less miserable, but _still_. Why didn't I see that kiss coming?"

"Honestly." Aly sets a hand on Jess's forearm and gives it a squeeze. "I don't think we're supposed to see things like that coming. I think we should just... let them come."

Cece groans again, and Aly just asks her what the problem is. "Nothing, it's just... Schmidt texted me that exact sentence last week, and I didn't hate it."

"Oh, gross."

"So gross."

—

"Hey, you're gonna be late for the scavenger hunt."

Jess doesn't even have her hiking boots laced up all the way, and she looks up to find him on the edge of her twin bed mid-tie. She wordlessly rubs her lips together when he scoots closer to her.

"These new hiking boots aren't cooperating. Why don't you just go without me?"

"I feel like no one here looks forward to group activities more than you, Jess," he tells her earnestly. "C'mon, don't be weird about it, okay?"

"Don't be weird about what, the fact that you just... You just took me, you just grabbed me, you just —"

"Kissed you?"

She cringes, but only because she's going to be twenty-nine next January and she still can't deal with crap like this out loud. "Y-Yeah. You kissed me. Why?"

"Why did I _kiss you_?" He's laughing under his breath, but then he stops when he realizes she's serious. "Wait, you really want me to explain my thought process leading up to it in excruciating detail, don't'cha?"

"I _am_ one of those people, yes, but it's just... I just didn't know you were into me like that, that's all."

He huffs, his shoulders hunching forward a little, still too close to her on this twin bed for her comfort.

"What made you think I wasn't? The time I put a salamander in your bed?" he jokes.

"Just one of many," she retorts. "Look, it's fine, I — I'm not trying to be one of those people anymore; someone who demands an exact play-by-play of your actions just because we kissed. I just - I find it hard to believe when someone is actually into me. Not many people are."

"Well. I am." Nick scratches his cheek and stands up, reaching his hand out for hers. She looks skeptical, or nervous, but she grabs onto it anyway, forgetting that her hiking boots are only half-tied. "Uhhh, anyway, c'mon. Who else is gonna kick my ass during the scavenger hunt?"

"No one."

"Exactly. Let's go."

—

The scavenger hunt is an epic fail, basically.

None of the kids on her team even _try_ , aside from Crystal, who gets tripped by Timmy in the mud early on and starts to cry. Jess spends the first half of it cleaning her off with the only dry towel she can find hanging on the clothesline back at the cabin, and by the time they jump back in, Nick's team is winning 10-2.

Nick's got a pencil behind his ear and a clipboard propped up against his knee. "Eleven to two, we win," he says proudly, and lifts his head up to acknowledge Jess when she and Crystal rejoin. "Hey. Look, this is all in good fun. Doesn't mean I'm the better counselor, although..."

Jess rolls her eyes and smacks his flannel-laden arm. "I hate you."

"No you don't. H-Hey, meet you back at the cabin?"

Part of her almost says, 'It's a date', but she's trying to learn how to keep her cool, how to _function_ around someone who admittedly has some sort of feelings for her. "Y-Yeah."

—

Jess lets Nick take over campfire duty for the night, rounding up their group of twenty and letting them roast marshmallows and tell some made up story about how this camp used to be haunted by zombie ghosts back in the day. (Honestly, Nick digs it, and makes a mental note to mention his in-progress Zombie Novel to the kids before summer ends.)

She goes back to their cabin to shower, leaving her pink tankini on when she hops in because these doors don't lock and Winston barged into their space last night to borrow Nick's flashlight, two nickles, and some 'lucky stick' he keeps zipped away in his backpack. Nick handed the items over with ease, and Jess didn't even _bother_ asking.

She's twenty-ish minutes into her shower, washing the stickiness of the bug spray off of her body, taking in how good the almost-hot water feels as she hums a few of her favorite songs from _The Smiths_. It feels good to be alone, taking the longest shower she's had since she's gotten here. Usually, they're rushing to save water, all get in and out and to the next activity for the day. She doesn't even feel bad about ducking out of campfire duty. She needed this.

She hears the cabin door open, shoes being toed off and thrown to the side to be dealt with later, which confirms it's her bunk mate. 

"Jess?" He calls out, and she doesn't answer, figuring he won't be able to hear her over the running water. "Jess, I'm back!"

Jess hurriedly rinses the rest of the strawberry-scented shampoo from her hair, leaning forward under the shower head and letting it all run down when the bathroom door creaks open.

"I-I won't peek if 'ya don't want me to." 

She looks over her shoulder and can't help but laugh at the way Nick's immaturely covering his eyes (there're a few gaps between his fingers, but it's fine) as he steps further into the bathroom.

"Just... gettin' my towel. That little shit Timmy dumped a bucket of water on me after the scavenger hunt."

"It's fine. I don't shower naked anymore. What if Winston comes in asking you for that weird stick again?"

Nick's facing the sink, wrapping the towel around his neck and wiggling it back and forth a few times. "What did my lucky stick ever do to you?"

"Nothing." She slows the shower water down now, grabbing the towel she hung over the curtain rod to wrap around herself. For a cabin in the middle of a Southern California summer, she's _freezing_ right now.

At the same time, she feels the shower curtain slide open, making her jump.

"Hey," he greets, like he hadn't been standing in there for the last two minutes of that formerly peaceful, serene shower.

She lets out a staggered breath. "Hey."

She's about to step out of the shower when he grabs her by the elbow, sending a little bit of nostalgia through her body. Wasn't this how... Last time...

"Before, when I —"

He stops his own words and leans in to kiss her, only this time she reciprocates faster, takes a second to appreciate the way his hands are sliding down her torso when she palms them with her own.

When he pulls out of the kiss, he brings his hands up to cup her face. It's closer than she's let anyone in a long time, and she doesn't hate it.

"I meant to... to make it somethin' like _that_."


End file.
